How to Migrate from Gorgias to Richpanel (Step by Step, 2026)

The short answer

Is the migration risky?: Not if you sequence it correctly. The data import is one click and runs in the background; the part to de-risk is the AI, by proving it on your own tickets before anything cuts over.
The five phases: (1) Audit what you actually use in Gorgias. (2) Prove the AI on your own historical tickets in collaborative mode, with Gorgias still serving customers. (3) Move conversations, tags, and macros in one import. (4) Validate and re-express your rules and integrations. (5) Cut over, timed to your Gorgias renewal.
Will I lose my data?: No. Conversations, contacts, tags, and macros import via API. Logic does not export: your Gorgias Rules and AI Agent flows are reconfigured as routing rules and AI SOPs, which is the real work.
How long?: About two weeks to full cutover. 50% autonomous resolution is a 30-day ramp, backed by a 50%-in-30-days-or-your-money-back guarantee.
When should I stay on Gorgias?: If the Gorgias AI is already resolving well at a cost you accept, or your team is trained and there is no renewal pressure, do not migrate. We say so below.

Why this migration is happening

Two triggers, almost every time. The AI died down, or the meter doubled.

We read 84 buyer deals against their own call transcripts. Gorgias is the single most common incumbent teams are leaving. The reason is rarely the ticketing workflow. It is one of two things, and usually both.

One: the AI Agent stopped resolving. Buyers describe a Gorgias AI that launched well and then plateaued. One support leader put it as the AI having "kind of died down," no longer accelerating with their volume. Another pulled their Gorgias AI after it began "picking up answers that we didn't give it," the polite phrase for a hallucinated reply that went out to a real customer. When the automation you are paying extra for starts losing accuracy instead of gaining it, the case for the add-on collapses.

Two: the double meter. Gorgias bills a ticket fee and then charges again for the AI resolution, roughly $0.90 per automated resolution on top of your plan (as of June 2026). Stack the per-ticket cost and the per-resolution AI fee and the effective cost of a resolved ticket can run several times higher than the headline plan price. One buyer summarized the whole category problem in a sentence: "an AI ticket shouldn't be more expensive than a human ticket." On a double meter, it often is.

A third factor is timing rather than a reason: Gorgias contracts auto-renew, and a renewal date is the forcing function that turns "we should look at this" into "we are moving." Renewal-window deals close fastest in our data, because the deadline forces a clean sequencing decision. If your Gorgias renewal is inside 90 days, that is the window this playbook is built for.

None of this means Gorgias is a bad product. It has the widest Shopify app marketplace in ecommerce and mature, well-trained ticketing workflows. If your Gorgias AI is resolving well at a cost you are happy with, the honest answer is to stay, and we make that case explicitly further down. This playbook is for the team where the AI underdelivered, the meter is climbing, or both.

The thing to understand before you start

What moves in one import, and what you rebuild by hand.

The single most useful frame for a Gorgias migration: data imports, logic does not. Everything in the left column moves through the API in an afternoon. Everything in the right column is re-expressed, not copied, and that is where your two weeks actually go.

Moves automatically (one-click import)	You rebuild (reconfigured, not copied)
Historical conversations and messages	Gorgias Rules and macros-as-automation logic
Contacts and customer history	AI Agent guidance, flows, and quick responses
Tags (carried across verbatim)	Routing, assignment, and escalation rules
Macros and canned responses (to saved replies and AI knowledge)	App integrations and webhooks (reconnected to source)
Help center articles (imported as AI knowledge)	Public help-center theming and its SEO (a re-platform decision)

The reason this distinction matters is that the column most teams fear is the one that is actually solved. Conversations, tags, and macros are not fragile and they are not the hard part. Brands have moved hundreds of thousands of historical conversations in a single afternoon. The work that earns its place on the calendar is the right column: a Gorgias Rule that auto-tags a VIP, an AI Agent flow that runs a return, an integration that posts a Recharge subscription change. Logic does not export, so each is re-expressed in the new system. Get that inventory wrong and a two-week migration slips, not because the data was hard, but because a rule you forgot quietly broke on day three. The five phases below are built around that one principle: automate the data, spend your effort on the logic, and never take Gorgias offline until the new AI has proven itself on a real queue.

The honest comparison

Richpanel, Gorgias, and the two other moves you could make instead.

Leaving Gorgias is not the only option, and Richpanel does not win every column. Define the criteria first, then read the grid. Each row is one operational test; competitor facts are stamped as of June 2026 from each vendor's own docs.

The criteria, defined before the table: AI resolution model is whether the AI resolves end to end and takes real actions (refund, cancel, edit a subscription) versus deflecting to an article. Pricing meter is single (per conversation) versus double (ticket fee plus a separate per-AI-resolution charge). Migration effort is whether Gorgias history, tags, and macros import in one pass. Reversibility is whether you can prove the AI on your own tickets in collaborative mode before committing. Where it wins names the situation that option beats the others.

Option	AI resolution model	Pricing meter	Where it wins
Migrate to Richpanel	AI-native: resolves end to end and takes real actions; collaborative or autonomous	Single, ~$0.30 / conversation	The Gorgias AI underdelivered and the double meter is climbing
Stay on Gorgias	AI Agent add-on on a ticketing core; ~$0.90 / AI resolution	Double (ticket + per-AI-resolution)	The AI already resolves well at a cost you accept; team is trained; widest Shopify app marketplace
Keep Gorgias, layer a separate AI	Third-party AI agent on top of the Gorgias helpdesk	Gorgias meter + the AI vendor's meter	You like the Gorgias workflow and only want to swap a weak AI layer (a smaller change)
Move to Zendesk	Bundled autonomous AI plus per-resolution; add-on QA	Per seat plus add-ons plus per-resolution AI	You need the broadest enterprise platform a security committee will rubber-stamp

Read it honestly. If your Gorgias AI is already resolving a healthy share of tickets at a price you are happy with, none of these moves beats staying put, and disruption is a real cost. Gorgias also has the wider Shopify app marketplace; if a niche Gorgias-only app is load-bearing for you, account for that in the audit. Layering a separate AI on Gorgias is the smallest change if the helpdesk itself is fine and only the bot is weak. And Zendesk remains the safe enterprise default for a committee whose first question is "how long have you been around." Richpanel is the right move in one specific case: the AI stopped working, the double meter is escalating, and you want autonomous resolution proven on your own tickets before you commit. For the full criteria-first comparison, see Best Gorgias Alternatives for AI Customer Service and the side-by-side Richpanel vs Gorgias page.

The playbook

Five phases, reversible at every step.

Each phase has an exit condition. An implementation manager runs the sequence end to end and signs off before you go live. Notice the order: the AI is proven on your own tickets in phase two, before the data even moves in phase three. That is what makes the migration reversible. Until you flip a channel in phase five, Gorgias is still running and you have committed to nothing.

Audit your Gorgias setup.

Most teams pay for more configuration than they use. The audit is the single highest-leverage hour of the migration, and it is where the right-hand "rebuild" column gets written down.

Inventory every live construct in Gorgias: Rules, macros, tags, views, ticket fields, integrations (Shopify, Recharge, Loop, Skio, Klaviyo, the carriers, anything custom), and the AI Agent guidance, flows, and quick responses you have built. Mark each one keep, retire, or rebuild. The point is not to recreate Gorgias. It is to carry forward only the logic that still earns its place, and to surface the integrations that will need reconnecting in phase four. If you cannot name what a Rule does, that is exactly the institutional knowledge a migration should capture, not lose.

Exit condition: a single sheet listing every Rule, AI flow, and integration with a keep / retire / rebuild decision.

Prove the AI on your own tickets, in collaborative mode.

This phase comes before any data cutover on purpose. The CX Manager AI reads your business, the AI is scored against your own historical Gorgias tickets, and then it runs one queue in collaborative mode where a human approves every reply. Gorgias keeps serving customers the entire time.

First, the CX Manager AI ingests your help center, your imported historical tickets, your product pages, and public sources, then drafts the SOPs and brand voice your agent will use, in roughly 20 minutes. This is the layer Gorgias has no equivalent for: the AI that configures the AI, so your team is not hand-writing prompts. Then the pre-launch evaluation pulls a stratified sample of your past resolved tickets with PII stripped, runs the agent against each customer message, and scores its response against what your human agents actually wrote. The agent does not touch a real customer until it crosses your accuracy bar on your data. Then you point it at one high-volume, low-risk intent (where-is-my-order is the usual choice) in collaborative mode, so a human approves each reply. You are watching it perform on the exact tickets your Gorgias AI struggled with, with zero risk, because nothing has moved.

Exit condition: the AI clears your accuracy bar on your own tickets, runs one queue in collaborative mode for several days, and your team trusts the drafts enough to expand intents.

Move conversations, tags, and macros in one import.

A one-click Gorgias import moves your history through the API in the background. No freeze window, no downtime. Your team keeps answering in Gorgias while it runs.

Historical conversations, messages, contacts, customer history, and tags move through the one-click Gorgias import. Tags carry across verbatim. Macros and canned responses map two ways: to saved replies for your human agents, and into the AI's knowledge so it answers in the same language your team already wrote. Brands have moved hundreds of thousands of historical conversations in a single afternoon, so volume is not the constraint. Because the new system is not yet serving customers, your team is unaffected and Gorgias is untouched.

Exit condition: conversation, contact, and tag counts reconcile between Gorgias and Richpanel, and a spot-check of the oldest and newest conversations renders correctly.

Validate before you flip a single channel.

Now the "rebuild" column from phase one comes due. Re-express your kept Gorgias Rules as routing rules and AI SOPs, reconnect each integration, and test every line before a channel moves.

Re-express the Gorgias Rules and AI flows you marked keep as Richpanel routing rules and AI SOPs. Reconnect each app integration and webhook (Shopify, Recharge, Loop, Skio, Klaviyo, carriers) to its source system, and confirm each one fires on a live test, not just a saved config. Reconcile the imported data one more time. The implementation manager signs off against a pre-cutover checklist, every line of which must be true before anything points at Richpanel. This is the gate that keeps a forgotten rule from breaking quietly on day three.

Exit condition: every kept Rule has a working equivalent tested with a sample ticket, every integration posts to its source system on a live test, and the implementation manager has signed off.

Cut over, timed to your Gorgias renewal.

Channels switch to Richpanel only after validation. Gorgias is kept read-only so nothing is stranded, and the flip lands just before your renewal so you never pay for two systems.

Point email forwarding, the chat widget, social, and SMS at Richpanel. Open tickets in flight are handled deliberately: the backlog is either drained in Gorgias or migrated as open conversations, never silently dropped. Keep the Gorgias instance read-only for a window so historical reporting and edge-case lookups stay reachable while your team builds confidence, then export a final archive and cancel at the renewal you planned the whole migration around. From here the ramp to 50% autonomous resolution continues over the first 30 days. It is backed by the guarantee: 50% resolution in 30 days, or your money back, with a milestone-payment option for finance-gated deals. Cutover is the start of that curve, not the end.

Exit condition: all channels resolve into Richpanel, Gorgias is read-only with a final export archived, cancellation is timed to renewal, and the AI's resolution rate is climbing on its 30-day ramp.

What the calendar actually looks like

About two weeks to cut over. Thirty days to 50%.

The phases overlap. The import and the AI bootstrap run while your team keeps working in Gorgias. Here is the realistic calendar: the collaborative-mode pilot proves the AI inside the first week, full validated cutover lands inside two weeks, and autonomous resolution is a 30-day ramp.

When	Phase	Who is serving customers
Day 1	Audit your Gorgias setup (01)	Your team, in Gorgias
Days 1–3	CX Manager AI bootstrap + pre-launch eval (02)	Your team, in Gorgias
Days 3–7	Collaborative-mode pilot on one queue (02) + one-click import (03)	Gorgias, plus AI drafting on one queue
Days 7–14	Re-express Rules, reconnect integrations, validate (04)	Channels move to Richpanel as each validates
Day ~14	Cutover, Gorgias read-only (05)	Richpanel, all channels
Day 30	Autonomy ramp continues (05)	Richpanel, ~50% autonomous resolution

Two numbers anchor the schedule and they are not the same number. The AI is resolving real tickets on a validated queue inside the first week. 50% autonomous resolution is an outcome that compounds as the CX Manager AI captures new patterns and your eval coverage expands, which is a 30-day ramp. Conflating the two is how vendors promise "live in five minutes" and then disappoint. The honest version is a one-week proof on your own tickets, a two-week full cutover, and a 30-day ramp to half your volume, backed by a money-back guarantee if the AI misses 50% in 30 days.

What the ramp looks like in production

At one wellness brand, the AI now sends 60% of every customer message at 4.43 / 5 CSAT, higher than the brand's own human team average of 4.25.

That is the curve a migration is buying: not a relocated inbox, but an agent that resolves a growing share of volume without human review, on the same history you imported from Gorgias. Read the full case study →

The honest caveat

What does not transfer one-to-one, and how to handle it.

A migration guide that claims everything copies across perfectly is selling. Four classes of thing are reconfigured rather than imported, and naming them is what keeps the timeline honest.

Gorgias Rules and macro automations. The logic does not export as code. Each Rule you marked keep in phase one is re-expressed as a Richpanel routing rule or an AI SOP. This is deliberate work, and it is why phase one matters: an un-inventoried Rule is the most common cause of a post-cutover surprise.
AI Agent guidance and flows. Your Gorgias AI configuration does not port across, and in most of these migrations you would not want it to, since the AI underdelivering is the reason you are moving. The CX Manager AI drafts fresh SOPs and flows from your own tickets and help center in phase two, then you tune them.
App integrations and webhooks. Gorgias has the widest Shopify app marketplace in ecommerce. Each integration you use is reconnected to its source system in phase four, not migrated. The common ones (Shopify, Recharge, Loop, Skio, Klaviyo, Slack, the major carriers) have native equivalents; a niche Gorgias-only app may not, which is exactly what the audit surfaces.
Public help-center theming and SEO. Your help articles import as AI knowledge immediately. A public, themed, search-indexed help center is a separate re-platform decision with its own redirect and SEO plan. Treat it as a follow-on project, not a cutover blocker.

The honest claim is not "nothing changes." It is that the data you are afraid of losing is preserved, and the things that genuinely change are known in advance, owned by a named person, and validated before a single channel moves.

Proof the sequence works

Teams that ran this exact path. On their own data.

The migration sequence is not theoretical. These are named, permission-cleared customers who moved onto Richpanel and let the AI take a growing share of volume.

Jones Road

Cody Plofker, CEO, reports zero Black Friday / Cyber Monday backlog for the first time in years after moving to Richpanel, with the team going from 18 to 10 agents and the platform live in under two weeks. The headcount math is the CFO's to read; the CX win is a peak season that no longer breaks the team.

Ridge

Sean Frank, CEO, reports cost per ticket down 70%, about $500K in annual savings, and CSAT up from 88% to 96%. The CSAT line is the one that matters here: autonomous resolution made the experience better, not cheaper at the customer's expense.

Karta Ventures

Mehtab Bhogal, Co-founder and CEO, moved three brands onto one workspace and reports a 72% drop in ticket volume on one of them, with zero migration issues. Multi-brand on one workspace is a fit most incumbents gate behind their top tier.

A wellness brand that went fully autonomous from day one is documented end to end, with real-time CSAT and a customer-approved write-up, in the wellness case study. Trust signals for the committee, SOC 2 (zero exceptions in the audit period), HIPAA-audited, and GDPR, are detailed on the security page. Reviews: Shopify App Store 4.7 stars across 127 reviews.

When not to migrate

Four cases where you should stay put.

Gorgias publishes content arguing against switching. We are not going to return the favor with a hit piece. The honest position is that in several situations, leaving Gorgias is the wrong call, and we would rather tell you now than have you cut over and regret it.

Your Gorgias AI already resolves well.

If the AI Agent is handling a healthy share of your tickets at a cost you are comfortable with, no migration is worth the disruption. The trigger for this playbook is an AI that died down or a meter that doubled. If neither is true for you, stay.

Your team is trained and there is no renewal pressure.

A deeply Gorgias-fluent team with no cost escalation and no expiry date is a weak migration candidate. One buyer renewed Gorgias after years precisely because the team was comfortable. Comfort is a real asset; do not discard it without a reason.

You only want to swap the AI layer.

If the Gorgias helpdesk workflow itself is fine and only the bot is weak, layering a separate AI agent onto Gorgias is a smaller change than a full platform move. It keeps a double meter, but it is less disruptive.

You need the broadest enterprise platform.

If a security committee's first question is vendor longevity and breadth, Zendesk is the safer default and we have lost deals to it for exactly that reason. See the Zendesk migration guide if you are weighing that path instead.

Migration to Richpanel makes sense when the opposite is true: the Gorgias AI underdelivered, your effective per-resolution cost is climbing on the double meter, you want autonomous resolution proven on your own tickets before go-live, and you want flat per-conversation economics (about $0.30 per conversation) rather than a ticket fee plus a separate per-AI-resolution charge. If that is you, the playbook above is the safe path. If it is not, staying is the right call.

Before you flip the switch

The pre-cutover checklist.

Do not move a single channel until every line below is true. This is the list the implementation manager signs off against in phase four.

1. Conversation counts reconcile.

Imported conversation, contact, and tag counts match Gorgias within tolerance. Spot-check the oldest and newest conversations and confirm macros landed in saved replies and AI knowledge.

2. Every kept Rule has an equivalent.

Each Gorgias Rule and AI flow marked keep in the audit has a working Richpanel routing rule or SOP, tested with a sample ticket.

3. Integrations post correctly.

Every reconnected app and webhook (Shopify, Recharge, Loop, Skio, Klaviyo, carriers) fires against its source system on a live test, not just a saved config.

4. The AI cleared the bar on your tickets.

The agent scored against your own historical Gorgias tickets at your accuracy threshold, and you have reviewed the specific failures, not just the headline number.

5. The collaborative-mode pilot earned trust.

One queue ran in collaborative mode for several days, a human approved each reply, and your team is comfortable expanding intents and moving to autonomous mode.

6. The open-ticket backlog has a plan.

In-flight tickets are either drained in Gorgias or migrated as open conversations. Nothing is silently dropped at cutover.

7. Gorgias stays read-only.

The old instance remains reachable for historical lookups and reporting through at least one billing cycle before cancellation.

8. Cancellation is timed to renewal.

The cutover lands just before the Gorgias renewal date, so you never pay for two systems or auto-renew a year you will not use.

Frequently asked

Leaving Gorgias, in plain English.

Can I import my Gorgias conversation history?

Yes. A one-click Gorgias import moves historical conversations, contacts, and tags through the API, and brands have moved hundreds of thousands of historical conversations in a single afternoon. The import runs in the background while your team keeps answering tickets in Gorgias, so there is no freeze window. It also serves a second purpose: that imported history is what the AI is scored against in the collaborative-mode pilot, so the agent is evaluated on the exact tickets your team handled before, not on a generic test set.

Will I lose my macros and tags when I leave Gorgias?

No. Tags carry across with the conversation import. Macros and canned responses map two ways: to saved replies your human agents use in the helpdesk, and into the AI's knowledge so it answers in the same language your team already wrote. What does not copy across as data is your Gorgias Rules and AI Agent flow logic and your app integrations. Logic does not export, so each rule you mark keep in the audit is re-expressed as a Richpanel routing rule or an AI SOP. That reconfiguration is the part this playbook spends the most time on.

How long does a Gorgias to Richpanel migration take?

Plan for about two weeks end to end. The one-click import runs in the background in hours. The CX Manager AI reads your business and drafts your SOPs and brand voice in roughly 20 minutes. The collaborative-mode pilot on one queue runs for several days before any channel moves, and full validated cutover lands inside two weeks. Reaching 50% autonomous resolution is a 30-day ramp, not a launch-day number, and it is backed by a money-back guarantee. Teams on an expiring Gorgias contract move fastest, because the renewal date forces a clean sequencing decision.

Do I have to switch off Gorgias all at once?

No, and you should not. The sequence is reversible by design. Your team keeps answering in Gorgias while the data imports in parallel and the AI is scored on your past tickets. You then run one high-volume, low-risk queue (where-is-my-order is the usual choice) in collaborative mode, where a human approves every AI reply, with the rest of your volume still flowing through Gorgias. Channels move to Richpanel only after that pilot validates. If the AI does not earn your trust on your own tickets, you have moved nothing irreversible and Gorgias is still running.

Why do teams leave Gorgias, and is the helpdesk the problem?

The helpdesk workflow is rarely the reason. In our 84-deal buyer research, the trigger to leave Gorgias is almost always one of two things: the AI Agent stopped resolving (buyers describe it as having "kind of died down") or the per-ticket-plus-per-AI-resolution bill kept climbing, because Gorgias charges a ticket fee and then roughly $0.90 per AI resolution on top, which can work out to several times the effective cost per ticket. Richpanel rebuilt the helpdesk around the AI and charges a single per-conversation meter (about $0.30 per conversation versus the $2 to $10 cost of a human reply), so there is no second AI meter.

When should I stay on Gorgias instead of migrating?

Stay if your Gorgias AI Agent is already resolving a healthy share of tickets at a cost you are happy with, because no migration is worth the disruption when the incumbent works. Stay if your team is deeply trained on Gorgias and there is no renewal or cost pressure forcing the question. If you want to keep the Gorgias helpdesk but swap only a weak AI layer, a layered AI tool is a smaller change than a full platform move. And if you need the broadest enterprise platform that a security committee will rubber-stamp, Zendesk is the safer default. Migrate to Richpanel when the AI stopped working, the double meter is escalating, and you want autonomous resolution proven on your own tickets before go-live.

How to decide

Run the decision, then run the playbook.

There is no single verdict here, because the right move depends on your situation. Walk these four questions in order. The first one that answers "yes" is your path.

Is your Gorgias AI resolving well at a cost you accept?

If yes, stay on Gorgias. Disruption is a real cost and a working incumbent is worth keeping. Revisit only if the AI plateaus or the meter climbs.

Is the helpdesk fine and only the AI weak, with no cost pressure?

If yes, consider layering a separate AI agent onto Gorgias. It keeps a double meter but is the smallest change. Read Best Gorgias Alternatives for the options.

Do you need the broadest enterprise platform a committee will approve?

If vendor longevity and breadth gate the decision, Zendesk is the safer default. See the Zendesk migration guide if you are weighing a move there instead.

Did the Gorgias AI underdeliver and is the double meter climbing?

If yes, this playbook is for you. Run the five phases, prove the AI on your own tickets in collaborative mode first, and time the cutover to your renewal. Compare the two platforms directly on Richpanel vs Gorgias, and check pricing for the single-meter math.

You are not leaving Gorgias because of the helpdesk. You are leaving because the AI stopped resolving and the bill kept climbing.